Business and nonprofit registrations in Colorado rose during the first quarter, which should support continued job growth in the months ahead, according to a new report Wednesday from the Colorado Secretary of State and the University of Colorado Boulder.

There were 22,599 new entity filings in the first quarter, a 7.4 percent increase from the first quarter of 2011.

The bulk of those new filings were business related, primarily limited liability companies at 16,364, and corporations at 2,909 , with a sprinkling of non-profits at 828. The remainder were less common structures like cooperatives, partnerships and foreign-based businesses.

The number of entities in “good standing” with the state, meaning they are current on filing requirements, was 480,230, up from 460,631 in same first quarter a year earlier.

Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler said his office sits on a mountain of data, but lacks an economist to pull out the “gold” that might be useful to businesses and public officials.

So he asked Richard Wobbekind, an economist and executive director of the Business Research Division at C.U. Boulder’s Leeds School of Business
, to sift through the data. The result will be a free quarterly economic report.

Of the many strands of information the Secretary of State collects, one thing in particular, new entity filings, correlated well with changes in overall employment, Wobbekind said.

Had economists had that information available to them before the 2008 downturn, they would have received several months warning of what was coming, he said.

New business registrations in Colorado began a steep decline in early 2008, nearly a full year before employment counts dropped off a cliff.

“Finding turning points is difficult in economic forecasting,” Wobbekind said. “This seems to be a good indicator of the turning points.”

The new indicator could also shed a light on what is happening to people who are are dropping out of the workforce but otherwise getting by financially.

Colorado’s labor force of 2.75 million is about as big now as it was back in the fall of 2008 and hasn’t grown despite tens of thousands of young people and newcomers to the state seeking work.

People starting businesses don’t show up on official employment counts until they have a payroll and start adding staff. And while the rewards for many may be meager, they don’t consider themselves unemployed either.

The annual rate of new business filings in Colorado dropped from more than 82,000 in 2007 to under 72,000 in early 2009, but it has since rebounded to 80,000.

The thinking is that if more people are starting businesses in the state, some will need to hire others as they grow. Conversely, if fewer businesses are registering and more are shuttering, employment will fall.

Aldo Svaldi has worked at The Denver Post since 2000. His coverage areas have included residential real estate, economic development and the Colorado economy. He's also worked for Financial Times Energy, the Denver Business Journal and Arab News.

A customer dining at Washington’s Oceanaire restaurant noticed an unusual line at the bottom of his receipt: “Due to the rising costs of doing business in this location, including costs associated with higher minimum wage rates, a 3% surcharge has been added to your total bill.”